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    The Tale of Mrs. Ladybug
    The Tale of Mrs. Ladybug
    The Tale of Mrs. Ladybug
    Ebook109 pages1 hour

    The Tale of Mrs. Ladybug

    By Harry L. Smith and Arthur Scott Bailey

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateSep 1, 2007

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      Book preview

      The Tale of Mrs. Ladybug - Harry L. Smith

      The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Tale of Mrs. Ladybug, by Arthur Scott Bailey, Illustrated by Harry L. Smith

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

      almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

      re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

      with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

      Title: The Tale of Mrs. Ladybug

      Author: Arthur Scott Bailey

      Release Date: December 12, 2006 [eBook #20097]

      Language: English

      Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

      ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TALE OF MRS. LADYBUG***

      E-text prepared by Joe Longo

      and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team

      (http://www.pgdp.net/)

      THE TALE OF

      MRS. LADYBUG

      Copyright, 1921, by

      GROSSET & DUNLAP

      CONTENTS

      THE TALE OF MRS.

      LADYBUG

      I

      THE POLKA DOT LADY

      Little

      Mrs. Ladybug was a worker. Nobody could deny that. To be sure, she had to stop now and then to talk to her neighbors, because Mrs. Ladybug dearly loved a bit of gossip. At the same time there wasn't anyone in Pleasant Valley that helped Farmer Green more than she did. She tried her hardest to keep the trees in the orchard free from insects.

      Some of her less worthy neighbors were known sometimes to say with a sniff, If Mrs. Ladybug didn't enjoy her work she wouldn't care about helping Farmer Green. If she hadn't such a big appetite she'd stop to chat even more than she does now.

      That might seem an odd remark—unless one happened to know how Mrs. Ladybug freed the orchard of the tiny pests that attacked it. The truth of the matter was this: Mrs. Ladybug ate the little insects that fed upon the fruit trees. Her constant toil meant that she devoured huge numbers of Farmer Green's enemies.

      Goodness knows what Farmer Green would have done had Mrs. Ladybug and all her family lost their taste for that kind of fare. The orchard might have been a sorry sight.

      Perhaps it was only to be expected that Mrs. Ladybug should have little patience with folk that seemed lazy. She thought that Freddie Firefly wasted too much of his time dancing in the meadow at night. She considered Buster Bumblebee, the Queen's son, to be a useless idler, dressed in his black velvet and gold. Having heard that Daddy Longlegs was a harvestman, she urged him to go to work for Farmer Green at harvest time. And as for the beautiful Betsy Butterfly, Mrs. Ladybug found all manner of fault with her.

      Nothing made Mrs. Ladybug angrier than to see Betsy Butterfly flitting from flower to flower in the sunshine, followed by her admirers.

      "What can they see in that gaudy creature?" Mrs. Ladybug often asked her friends.

      It will appear, from this, that Mrs. Ladybug was not always as pleasant as she might have been. Moreover, she was something of a busybody and too fond of prying into the affairs of others. And if she didn't happen to approve of he neighbors, or their ways, Mrs. Ladybug never hesitated to speak her mind.

      When she first appeared on Farmer Green's place, wearing her bright red gown with its black spots, everyone supposed that Mrs. Ladybug was dressed in her working clothes. And indeed she was! Nor did she ever don any other.

      I've no time to fritter away, she declared when somebody asked her what she was going to wear to Betsy Butterfly's party. "If I go to the party I'll just drop in

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